Brian Kelly is an offensive-oriented football mind in one of the most pressure-filled jobs in sports. There’s just no way the Notre Dame coach was ever going to hand the job of starting quarterback to a player who hadn’t earned it.

But Gunner Kiel, the freshman who reportedly will transfer from Notre Dame after running the scout-team offense in 2012, may someday kick himself for giving up on his Irish dreams. Why do we say that? Because Kelly has proven himself to be flexible, if not fickle, when it comes to whom he plays on Saturdays.

Everett Golson won a wide-open competition for the starting job last summer, but he was benched during several games for Tommy Rees. And Rees is the guy who, you’ll remember, replaced Dayne Crist as starter during the opening game in 2011. Throughout the 2012 regular season, Kelly never hesitated when asked if he might switch quarterbacks during an upcoming game; the answer was always yes, it could happen.

Only heading into the BCS title game did Kelly say, “No, Everett Golson’s my guy.”

With all of spring and summer practices ahead of him, Kiel would seem to have had an opportunity to move up on the depth chart. Formerly one of the hottest quarterback recruits in the country, the 6-foot-4, strong-armed Kiel would seem to have had an opportunity to factor more heavily into Kelly’s thinking on game days to come.

It would’ve been a roll of the dice for Kiel to stick with Notre Dame—Golson has, after all, three more seasons of eligibility—and it doesn’t appear this particular player was willing to bet on himself. That’s certainly an arguable point: Some would say his decision to transfer is, in fact, a bet on his ability, that he’ll find a landing spot where he’ll be able to start under center in 2014 and beyond.

But Kiel has a history of looking for outs. Ask Indiana, the first school from which he decommitted. Ask LSU, where Les Miles may still be ticked off at Kiel for decommitting so close to last year’s signing day.

The career stats now for Kiel: three serious relationships with college programs, and zero snaps taken. Assuming Kiel isn’t going to change his mind, the first of those numbers is the only one that’s guaranteed to change.